Mine

And she was almost certain that one of those men – Walker, Hudley, or Cavanaugh – used to be known as Jack Gardiner.

She put the album back in its place and closed the drawer. There was no evidence that the drawer had been tampered with or the album discovered. She went into the front room and circled the telephone. Call the police? Report a burglary? But what, if anything, had been taken? She roamed around the house, checking closets and drawers. A metal box that held two hundred dollars in ready cash hadn't been touched. Her clothes – Sears and Penney's ready-to-wear – all remained on their hangers. Nothing was missing; even the pane of glass that had been cut from the door was lying on the kitchen's countertop. She walked from room to room in the cottage, her Rubik's Cube clicking but no solution in sight.

The telephone rang, and Didi picked it up in the front room. 'Hello?'

A pause. Then: 'Didi?'

If her heart had been pounding before, now her stomach seemed to rise to her throat. 'Who is this?'

'It's me. Mark Treggs.'

'Mark?' It had been five or six months since they'd last spoken. She always called him, not the other way around. It was part of their understanding. But something was wrong; she could hear the tension thick in his voice, and she said quickly, 'What is it?'

'Didi, I'm here. In Ann Arbor.'

'Ann Arbor,' she repeated, dazed. Click, click, click. 'What're you doing here?'

'I've brought someone to see you.' In his room at the Days Inn, Mark glanced at Laura, who stood nearby. 'We've been waiting for you to get back from your trip.'

'Mark, what's this all about?'

She's right on the edge, Mark thought. About to jump out of her skin. 'Trust me, okay? I wouldn't do anything to hurt you. Do you believe that?'

'Somebody broke in. Trashed my kitchen. Jesus, I don't know what's going on!'

'Listen to me. Okay? Just settle down and listen. I wouldn't hurt you. We go back too far. I've brought someone who needs your help.'

'Who? What are you talking about?'

Laura took a step forward and grasped the telephone before Mark could say anything else. 'Bedelia?' she said, and she heard the other woman gasp at the unfamiliar voice speaking her name. 'Don't hang up, please! Just give me a few minutes, that's all I'm asking.'

Didi was silent, but her shock was palpable.

'My name is Laura Clayborne. Mark brought me here to see you.' Laura sensed Didi was about to slam down the phone, the hairs stirring on the back of her neck. 'I'm not working with the police or the FBI,' she said. 'I swear to God I'm not. I'm trying to find my baby. Do you know that Mary Terrell stole my child?'

There was no answer. Laura feared she'd already lost Bedelia Morse, that the phone would crash down and she would be long gone by the time they drove to the house.

The silence stretched, and Laura felt her nerves stretch with it.

The kernel of a scream began to form, like a small dark seed, in Laura's mind. What she didn't know was that the same seed was growing in the mind of Bedelia Morse.

Finally, it came. Not a scream, but a word born from the seed: 'Yes.'

Thank God, Laura thought. She had squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for Didi to hang up. Now she opened them again. 'Can I come talk to you?'

Another silence as Didi thought it over. 'I can't help you,' she said.

'Are you sure about that? Do you have any idea where Mary Terrell might have gone?'

'I can't help you,' Didi repeated, but she didn't hang up.

'All I want is my baby back,' Laura said. 'I don't care where Mary Terrell goes, or what happens to her. I've got to have my child back. I don't even know if he's still alive or not, and it's tearing me to pieces. Please. I'm begging you: can't you help me at all?'

'Look, I don't know you,' Didi replied. 'You could be undercover FBI for all I know. I just got home from a trip, and somebody broke into my house while I was gone. Was it you?'

'No. But I saw the man who did.' And her body remembered the scuffle, too. Her right shoulder was a mass of blue-green bruises under her white blouse and cable-knit sweater, and another line of bruises ran across her right hip beneath her jeans.

'The man.' Didi's voice had sharpened. 'What man?'

'Let me come see you. I'll tell you when I get there.'

'I don't know you!' It was almost a shout of fear and frustration.

'You're going to,' Laura answered firmly. 'I'm giving the phone back to Mark now. He'll tell you I can be trusted.' She handed the telephone to him, and the first thing he heard from Didi was an enraged 'You bastard! You betrayed me, you bastard! I ought to kill you for this!'

'Kill me?' he asked quietly. 'You don't really mean that, do you, Didi?'

She gave an anguished sob. 'You bastard,' she whispered. 'You screwed me. I thought we were like a brother and sister.'

'We are, and that won't change. But this woman needs help. She's clean. Let us come see you,' Mark said. 'I'm asking like a brother.'

Laura walked away from him, opened the curtain, and looked outside at the cold blue sky. She could see her car in the parking lot, its windshield marked with the GO HOME warning. She waited in anguish, until Mark put down the receiver.

'She'll see us,' he told her.

On the drive to Didi's house, Mark said, 'Be cool. Don't go all to pieces or start begging. That won't help.'

'Okay.'

Mark touched the letters carved into the windshield. 'Son of a bitch did a job on you, didn't he? I knew that guy sounded weird. Plug in his throat.' He grunted. 'I wonder what the hell he was after.'

'I don't know, and I hope I never see him again.'

Mark nodded. They were a couple of miles from the cottage. 'Listen,' he said, 'there's something I've got to lay on you. I told you about Didi having plastic surgery, remember?'

'Yes.'

'Didi used to be pretty. She's not anymore. She had the plastic surgeon make her ugly.'

'Make her ugly? Why?'

'She wanted to change. Didn't want to be what she was before, I guess. So when you see her, be cool.'

'I'll be cool,' Laura said. 'I'll be damned cool.'

She slowed down and turned the BMW onto the house's dirt driveway. As Laura drove up to the cottage, she saw the front door open. A plump woman wearing a dark green sweater and khaki trousers came out. She had long red hair that fell in waves around her shoulders. Laura's palms were damp, her nerves raw. Be cool, she told herself. She stopped the car and switched off the engine. The moment had arrived.

Bedelia Morse stood in the doorway, watching, as Laura and Mark got out of the car and approached her. Laura saw the woman's toadish face and crooked nose, and she wondered what kind of plastic surgeon would have consented to do such work. And what private torment had made Bedelia Morse want to wear a face that had been sculpted into ugliness?

'You shit,' Didi said to Mark, her voice cold, and she went inside without waiting for them.

In the cottage's tidy front room, Didi sat in a chair where she could look out a window at the road. She didn't offer seats to Laura or Mark; she kept her gaze on him because she recalled Laura's pain-stricken face from the newscasts and looking at her was difficult. 'Hello, Didi,' Mark said, trying for a smile. 'It's been a long time.'

'How much did she pay you?' Didi asked.

Mark's fragile smile evaporated.

'She did pay you, right? How many silver coins bought my head on a platter?'

Laura said, 'Mark's been a friend to me. He -'

'He used to be my friend, too.' Didi glanced quickly at Laura and then away. Laura Clayborne's eyes were deep sockets, and they burned with a terrible intensity. 'You screwed me, Mark. You sold me, and she bought me.